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Tuesday, December 6, 2011

It's the Status Quo for a Reason

I hope y'all checked out this series about the Presidential Pardon system.

If not, click the link because it makes for good reading. The headline on the first story is "Presidential Pardon system heavily favors whites."

It could have easily been "American life heavily favors whites."

Seriously, that's what the article basically tells us. Being white, with all the statistical and historical benefits that come along with that status, is better for your life. When it comes to pardons, the seemingly "random" factors considered are actually factors where white folks are much more likely to do well thanks to a host of other issues from historic wealth, to a biased justice system.

At this point in time, the system has been rigged for so long that you can actually avoid direct bias and still get the results you really want. It's incredibly easy to add the veneer of meritocracy to the rotten floorboards of discrimination, and then deny all culpability when the floor collapses and people die. It's the Golden Age of racism, you might say.

Sadly, nothing will change. It's great that this was investigated, but I can already see some easy ways the statistics will be attacked and progress thwarted. More importantly, the vast majority of Americans aren't interested in progress on these issues because that would mean acting in their own self interest.

So, folks will act shocked and dismayed, and they will vow to get to the bottom of things, but what they will really do is allow the status quo to continue. Because the status quo is benefiting the people it was always designed to benefit.

[T]he Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.